Category: speaking in tongues | Page 4

Woman ‘in the Spirit’ on a Jamaican Flight

There is a partially false story being rapidly spread on Facebook (and probably elsewhere) that a woman aboard a flight to Jamaica saved the plane from crashing by being ‘in the Spirit’ before take-off. The plane was at Owen Roberts International Airport in the Cayman Islands. While the woman caused a disturbance by jumping around, clapping and yelling ‘Jesus’ in the aisle, the part about there being a major problem with the plane that would have caused it to crash is untrue.

Here is what is being shared, taken from a post made on November 25 by a female pastor who is touted as an apostle, prophet, and prophetic voice: “A woman got in the spirit of the Holy Ghost this morning when she boarded a flight to Jamaica causing the flight to be delayed for 2hrs. They had to remove her from the plane. Soon after, the Airport authorities realised that something was gravely wrong with the plane engine & that if they had taken off 2 hours earlier, the plane would definitely have crashed!!! Thank you Lord! The lives of your children are precious to you & you know when their work on earth is done. God saved all the passengers and crew, because of the obedience of one woman! HALLELUJAH! OUR GOD is truly the Chief Pilot of our lives!” (Note: The video itself initially was shared on the day of the event as can be seen here (this has since been removed). The inaccurate portrayal of events goes back to October when people started saying things like, “This Lady was in spirit on the plane to Jamaica and because of the delay they found that there was a problem with one of the engines.”)

A few days later the story grew to an even taller tale when one man wrote (this has since been removed) in part, “This woman felt the Holy Spirit just before a plane flight to Jamaica yesterday. She told them God informed her that the flight would go down. It took a while to get things situated and eventually throw her off the plane, so the flight was delayed for 2hrs. Soon after, the Airport authorities realized that something was gravely wrong with the plane engine. If they had taken off 2 hours earlier, the plane would definitely have crashed!!!”

On the date of the incident, Caymanmarload.com wrote about it. They stated that, “Apparently something happened with the one of the engines and after taxing off and they had to return to the gate” and said that a passenger stated a man started praying, which seemed to prompt the actions of the woman in question. That is when she got out of her seat and was jumping and shouting. Their website is the only one where I found the mention of engine trouble or that the plane had taxied out and then returned to the gate. I have never been able to verify there was any engine trouble.

The official statement from Cayman Airways was that the video of the incident which had been circulated did happen on flight KX-620 on October 23, 2017. In their statement, there is no mention of any major malfunction with the plane and certainly not that the woman’s actions caused them to discover it or that the plane would have crashed. Here is part of what they said: “The aircraft was at the gate with passengers boarded, but with the main cabin door still open while a minor maintenance issue was being resolved before departure. Shortly after the Captain announced that the maintenance work was completed and that the aircraft would soon be on its way, a female passenger left her seat and began shouting and jumping as can be seen in the video.” There was only a delay of an hour and 13 minutes as the woman was removed from the plane and her luggage retrieved.

So there are only three basic statements from the November 25th post which are accurate:
1) it was a morning flight to Jamaica
2) the woman was removed from the plane
3) the woman ‘got in the spirit’ (which I won’t attempt to address in this article)

It is NOT true that:
1) the woman’s actions caused them to discover a problem with the plane
2) there was a two hour delay
2) there was something gravely wrong with the engine
3) the plane would have crashed
4) the woman’s actions saved the lives of the people on board

It is so important to fact check stories before spreading them across social media and elsewhere. One should not embellish a story, especially not in order to promote or prove their beliefs. Doing so causes others to shake their head in disbelief as thousands of people rapidly share a false story that could have been easily fact checked in a few minutes time.

You may use this if you see this story being spread.

What is even more problematic is when people are shown the report is untrue and they attempt to discredit the airline’s statement, insinuating or outright stating that they wouldn’t tell the truth. Please look at the facts and use discernment. There was only a 73 minute delay in the flight and some of that was taken in evicting the woman from the plane and retrieving her luggage. Had there been a major problem with the engine, enough that it would have crashed, is it reasonable to believe that it could be repaired in just over one hour or that they would have taken the chance on using the plane after such a discovery?

In the short time it took me to write this, the post I linked to was shared an additional 2,068 times. Most of the comments are praising and believing the report. As of my update to this article on November 29, it had almost two million views, was shared 50,412 times and commented on by 25,000 people. Added July 13, 2018: For some reason in July 2018, the story went viral again. People had never stopped commenting, liking and sharing what was posted by the above mentioned female pastor. As of this update, the post has been viewed 7.2 million times, liked by 123,000, commented on 68,000 times and shared 137,176 times. It is quite disheartening to see so many Christians sharing this tale and never once questioning its veracity or checking first to see if it happened as stated and then berating people who question it. Within twelve hours of this update, it had been viewed another .6 million times, commented on 6,000 more times and shared another 13,000 times. That people are so quick to believe and pass on this report is sad.

December 1, 2017 Update: Cayman Marl Road reported on October 27, “Our sources have informed us that as of yesterday the passenger, identified as Ms. Barbara Cecile Bryan, remains on islands. Apparently she was removed from the flight that day and had her ticket cancelled for travel for the following morning. We understand that Cayman Airways/CIAA are in talks as to whether or not she should be banned from traveling on the airline and for how long.” If the name is accurate, she was granted Caymanian status on December 31, 2003 according to an official report.

On their Facebook page, they reported on October 25 that this woman had been hospitalized in the mental health ward after being removed from the flight. Another person shared that the woman “was out in the street where she was staying doing the same thing two days before boarding the plane.” Yet another commented, “Sadly, there were Haitians on that flight who are heading home via Jamaica after being here for almost 3 months. Recovering Open heart surgery patients who became very scared. Their translator who is also a born again Christian said he’d never seen anything like this before and they are all relieved the lady was removed from the flight.” In a separate Facebook discussion, (this has since been removed) one woman claiming to have been on the flight shared similar thoughts, “i was on the flight sitting across from her it was scary for my kids too.”

On November 29, buried amidst hundreds of comments on another Facebook post (this has since been removed) that was spreading this false report, a woman named Lori made the following comment that was ignored by others praising the story, “I was the flight attendant on that flight and your information is wrong. We had discovered a minor mechanical issue before this happened and went back to the gate to have it corrected. We were about to close the door when this occurred. She was removed and we departed safely to Kingston. I repeat this happened AFTER the problem was corrected.”

There is a news article on the incident: https://cayman27.ky/2017/10/passenger-removed-from-cayman-airways-flight/

This is the Facebook discussion about the above mentioned news article (this has since been removed): https://www.facebook.com/cayman27/posts/a-woman-was-removed-from/10154976577427452/

Here is the video with commentary from KevOnStage, made October 24.

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What keeps them enslaved?

What keeps them enslaved? In one word I would say “fear.” Fear of rejection. Fear of breaking the rules. Fear of damnation. Fear of freedom. Fear of shunning. Fear of the unknown. Fear of hell. Fear of God. Fear of what other people think. Fear of man. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of being truly and fully human. Fear of being seen. Fear of the “world”. Fear of evil. Fear of committing the unforgivable sin. Fear of being the same as other Christians and not special end-times elitists. Fear of their worldview collapsing. Fear of doubts. Fear of intrusive thoughts. Fear of emotions (“good” and “bad” emotions – both).

Fear of reality. Fear of being “found out” (shame). Fear of social interactions beyond their managed and controlled interactions. Fear of other churches. Fear of Christendom. Fear of the end of the world. Fear of the “rapture.” Fear of being the only one with scrupulosity. Fear of “worldlies” infecting them. Fear of being excluded from within. Fear of constant judgement and gossip. Fear of everything they believe not being certain. Fear of mystery. Fear of unanswerable and difficult questions. Fear of the size of the universe (if God really is that big, then maybe our church doesn’t have a total monopoly on him after all).

Fear of the final judgement. Fear of demons. Fear of the supernatural. Fear of meeting Jesus face to face. Fear of people who have visions or dreams from God. Fear of speaking in tongues. Fear of science. Fear of eternity (will I be lonely and isolated for the whole of eternity, like I am here on earth). Fear of the book of Revelation. Fear of saying “no.” Fear of speaking up. Fear of questioning. Fear of one’s own mind. Fear that one’s heart is wicked and evil beyond help. Fear of Jesus saying “I do not know you.”

Fear of not doing enough for the Lord. Fear of being on the lowest rung in heaven because they weren’t good enough or diligent enough here on earth. Fear of other’s Christians’ displays of worship in spirit and truth. Fear of being shamed. Fear of other Christians’ faith. Fear of thinking for oneself. Fear that they’ve wasted years believing a lie. Fear of apostates. Fear of talking about God in any way outside of the church building…

I think they are enslaved by a spirit of fear. It keeps them compliant, obedient, unquestioning, and in a permanent fog and state of cognitive dissonance. Fear is from the dark side. It is from hell. There is no fear in heaven. Where Jesus is there is liberty and freedom and joy and love. So why are they entrenched in fear and anxiety? Because that’s the fuel that powers their religious and God-less system. 🙁

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My story pt. 1

So I couldn’t decide in which order to write my story so I hope what I say will make sense. Sorry, it took so long to write more life is crazy!

My first memories of church were sleeping under the old wooden pews. My mother took us to church when we were sick and when we were well. She took us when we were on E and didn’t know if we would make it back home. (In her defense, we were never stranded going or coming from church.) I also remember crying and praying until I felt sick, trying so hard to speak in tongues so I wouldn’t go to hell. I was so fearful I wouldn’t make it and the rapture was going to happen soon and we had better be ready and repenting and re-repenting every day.

My birthday always fell during family camp. The year I was turning 8 everyone kept telling me “wouldn’t it be neat if you got the holy ghost at camp on your birthday.” The Sunday night before my 8th birthday I prayed so hard and was told I had spoken in tongues. I believed it but now I question that experience. I was just a baby. I got baptized the following week.

I always felt like what I did was never good enough. I had/have such a low opinion of myself, but at the same time, I was learning to be an elitist. We were the “chosen” people. No one had the “truth” but us. We should feel so blessed.

The pastor at that time taught against random stuff, such as no shoulder pads for women (the men could wear them in their suits) but it was the 80s and 90s for goodness sake lol, no hair bows, no red shoes (really he didn’t like women wearing red at all), women must wear their hair up (if you wore it down you were “loose”), panty hose at all times. Those are some I remember I’m sure there were more.

That man also told my mom if she didn’t leave my dad for good he would turn her into child protective services. My mom did leave him but the pastor didn’t make sure we were safe, had food, have a place to live, check on us etc. He continually was very manipulative to my mother and sister. When my mom went in and told him we were leaving and going to another United Pentecostal Church he cursed her and said that she would never prosper spiritually, financially or prosper in life in general. My mom felt extremely guilty but we left anyway. I do not believe in curses but it messed with my mom’s head and she still struggles to this day.

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The hardest thing about spiritual abuse

In early 2000 I was thrown out of a church. The process lasted several agonizing weeks, but things had been very bad for months. There was the man who kept telling me he was praying I’d lose my job because I was a woman and should work close to the church. There were the high standards that made no sense to me, the preaching about begging God for a special revelation of oneness because if you didn’t have that you would surely go to hell… after all, if you didn’t have that, you surely didn’t know God. The pastor bragged about his long fasts and groaned about people not wanting to ‘hear the truth.’ He didn’t share information with everyone, just with the men. The men were to tell their wives at home, which excluded me as a single woman. He told me that I needed a man over me, that I should either get married or move home to my dad’s house. Neither of those was an option. And there was the sermon about how if we leave our local church we have cut ourselves off from God, from life, from forgiveness, as though we have amputated ourselves from the body of Christ.

I remembered last night how, on December 31, 1999, I was terrified that God was going to come back and thought I’d surely be lost. I spent that night on the living room floor, sobbing and begging God to forgive me for who knows what, and never feeling any peace or forgiveness. I realize in my mind now that what I was dealing with was not conviction but condemnation, and fear, not godly sorrow or repentance. There was no peace or forgiveness because I wasn’t repenting of anything. I’d done nothing wrong except attend where I did and believe what I did, and those weren’t things I would recognize should be repented of for many years.

God didn’t come back on December 31, 1999. The pastor told me about a month later that he discerned I had bad thoughts and if I didn’t change, he would throw me out. He then left town for several weeks. How does a person change thoughts someone thinks they have, but they don’t? I ‘repented.’ I spent hours more on the floor, sobbing and asking God to change me. I stopped eating, thinking I would fast until they returned. But I thought they would be gone for a week at most, not several. I finally had to eat, and felt I was condemning myself by doing so. I tried to reach them by phone so that I could talk to them before breaking my fast, but they wouldn’t answer at first and then answered only to tell me to stop calling them. I called everyone at the church asking them to forgive any offense real or imagined, and was later accused of calling them threatening to kill myself instead.

These things had a psychological impact, but the spiritual impact was greater. I’d started attending there with a fairly healthy view of God and faith. By the time I left, my self confidence had been torn out from under me (I felt guilty just for being invited out to eat, because ‘saints’ shouldn’t eat with the ungodly-1 Cor 5:11), but more than that, my faith in God had been shredded as well. I repented, but I hadn’t felt forgiveness, and certainly hadn’t seen any forgiveness from others at the church, not even the ‘man of God,’ the pastor. I begged God for the special revelation we supposedly must have, but never really understood or experienced anything about this ‘revelation’ as the pastor described it. I fasted for days but was still thrown out. My pastor had discerned something evil in me, some thought I didn’t know I had, and though I’d prayed and fasted and repented, things only got worse.

Above all of this, these things had happened during a time when I’d thought I was closest to God. I was praying in tongues often, studying the bible, feeling the emotionalism in church, living by the high standards set, close to the pastor and his family (at least in my mind), repeatedly playing the sermons and music I was told to, and was very involved in bus ministry, Sunday School, and music at church.

All of these ended the night the pastor called me and told me never to come back. No one but me ever realized they ended, because that night I lost every person who might have known. I went to another similar church, but was told there to pretend nothing had happened and just ‘move on’. I couldn’t move on, though, and I couldn’t talk about the reasons I couldn’t, since I was to pretend nothing was wrong… and since admitting these things would have been good reason for the new pastor to label me ‘backslid.’ The only thing to do at that point would be to ‘pray through’. More fear, more nights on the floor sobbing, begging God for something that at that point I knew wouldn’t happen. To make matters worse, just as I would start to heal somewhat and begin to feel that there might be hope, something else would happen and the doubts would come back, as well as all of the memories.

Of everything that happened in my 19 years in Pentecost, that’s what had the most lasting damage. That combination–the fear, the condemnation, the false teachings that backed them, but most of all the doubt that they instilled. Not just self doubt, but faith shattering doubt of the Bible and of God.

Things are better now. I am healing, slowly. There have been times I wanted to just walk away from all of it. It would be easier not to believe than to fight through the mess that was left after everything happened. But there have also been times of learning and growth, and for me, these have been the most healing, times when I saw the scriptures that were used against me in a different light and I realized how wrongly they’d be used, times when I recognized some of what caused the damage and was able to rebuild, to heal, and to finally move forward, not as though nothing had happened, but in spite of what has.

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Focus on Church or Jesus?

We often speak of the difference between following religion and having a relationship with God. Many of us, while in the United Pentecostal Church or similar churches, ended up getting caught up in religion and our focus shifted.

Below is a quote from an article written in The Reporter News (a local weekly paper near the Houston area) on March 15, 2006. A minister by the name of Casey Jones is the author.

…if I had tried to convince some*one to become a Christian, it would have been a matter of my trying to get them to agree with me, rather than wishing for them to meet and experience God.

The above quote says a great deal. Think about it for a bit. How many focus on getting people to their church or at least their organization? How many focus on getting the person into the baptismal tank or to have them speak in tongues?

Compare these things with wanting the person to learn of and have a personal relationship with God. See the enormous difference? Perhaps you have been guilty of the same? I know I have.

Some other believers could go door knocking or send out invitations to their church, but would have been happy if, as a result of their efforts, someone went to another church in the area. While they would have welcomed the person at their church, it wasn’t just about filling up their pews or hurrying up to drag them to their water baptism. For them it was about the people coming to know Jesus.

Do you see the difference?

This brings another thought to mind, and that is how some are in such a hurry to drag people into the baptismal tank and get them to speak in tongues. They will gather around and stay with the new people until both happen and then move on to the next ‘unsaved’ believer. It is all about getting two acts completed so a person is ‘saved’ and often there is little focus on helping them develop their relationship with God.

Something to think about….